[Foundation-l] Copyrighted maps and Derived works from copyrighted sources.

Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen at gmail.com
Thu Apr 1 11:21:31 UTC 2010


Hoi,
The position of a bridge, a building, a statue is a fact. It cannot be
copyrighted and the only reason for attribution of a map used to obtain such
a coordinate is to allow other people to verify the process. Coordinates are
available on many Wikipedia articles, they come from a wide variety of
sources and are provided by a large number of people. There is no way of
knowing what these people used to provide the information with. It is highly
irrelevant.

I had a look at your references to entries in mailing lists. The only thing
I find is people having an opinion but not providing arguments. Facts, among
them coordinates found in Wikipedia articles, are part of a CC-by-sa
resource and once extracted from Wikipedia it is no longer possible to claim
copyright and insist on a particular licensing scheme. When articles that
include coordinates are projected as an overlay on a map be it OpenStreetMap
or Google Maps / Earth such an overlay uses the maps as a backdrop to
provide orientation in the real world.
Thanks,
     GerardM

On 1 April 2010 12:07, jamesmikedupont at googlemail.com <
jamesmikedupont at googlemail.com> wrote:

> On this note, there is no real discussion of the copyright and
> licensing issues on this page:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Obtaining_geographic_coordinates#Google_tools
>
> It says :
> There are various ways to obtain geographic coordinates. Note that
> regardless of the source of coordinates, it is good practice to
> evaluate whether they appear reasonable at first glance.
>
> Be sure to read the licensing information carefully so that data
> providers receive an appropriate attribution.
>
> So how are these coordinates being attributed?
>
> mike
>
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